The Serial Killer's Wife (5 page)

Unconsciously she started backward, one slow step after another. “That’s not my name.”
 

“What?”
 

“My name isn’t Elizabeth. It’s Sarah.”
 

“Please, I thought we were done playing those silly games. You must realize by now I know everything there is to know about you. Why deny it?”
 

3:01 ... 3:00 ... 2:59 ...
 

“Ask him one more time. Ask him why he molested children. Maybe now that he knows he’s going to die he’ll be truthful.”
 

But she couldn’t ask the man anything, not now that he was so close to death, bawling like a baby, begging to her to please please please help him, that he was sorry for what he’d done, that he was a bad person but
please
he didn’t deserve this.
 

One backward step after another, she said, keeping her voice calm, “What have you done with my son?”
 

“He’s safe. And he’ll remain that way as long as you continue to do what I tell you.”
 

2:41 ... 2:40 ... 2:39 ...
 

“Now ask him. Ask him why he did what he did.”
 

Before she knew it she disconnected the call, sprinted forward, placed a hand on Reginald Moore’s shaking shoulder. “Reginald,” she said, then shouted, “Reginald!” and smacked him with her open palm across the face.
 

He went still, stunned, and slowly looked up at her. He whispered, “I don’t want to die.”
 

“I know,” she said, and despite all the terrible things she knew about this man and what he had done she felt true sympathy for him, wishing she could do anything to free him from this awful mess. “But I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”
 

“Please”—his voice cracking as he started sobbing again—“please, I said I was sorry. I did my time in jail. I’ve ... I’ve ... I’ve
changed!
”
 

2:07 ... 2:06 ... 2:05 ...
 

The phone in her hand started vibrating.
 

She said, “Describe the man who did this to you. His height, his hair color, anything you can remember.”
 

Shaking even harder now, his face scrunched up, Reginald Moore sobbed, “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so, so sorry.”
 

The phone vibrated a second time.
 

“Reginald, please, tell me anything you can.”
 

“My parents hate me. They ... they ... they think I did what I did to spite them. But I didn’t. I ... I ... I ...”

The phone vibrated a third time.
 

She slapped his face again, much harder this time, shouting, “Reginald, goddamn it, tell me!”
 

But it was clear he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t, and before the phone vibrated a fourth time she pressed the
TALK
button.
 

Cain said, “Never fucking hang up on me again.”
 

She looked at the alarm clock.
 

1:36 ... 1:35 ... 1:34 ...
 

“Elizabeth, I’m not sure if it’s obvious to you yet or not, but I can detonate that collar whenever I wish.”
 

“Please, please, please,” sobbed Moore.
 

“All I have to do is press a button here on this remote switch and ... well, I’m sure you get the picture.”
 

Moore, rocking back and forth, staring up at her with tears in his eyes, begging, “Please, just help me, you’ve gotta help me ...”
 

Cain whispering in her ear with that dark robotic voice, “Elizabeth, you do get the picture, don’t you? Because I’m about to press the button right now.”
 

Elizabeth, holding the phone to her ear, slowly backing away from Reginald Moore, back toward the stairs.
 

“Ten seconds, Elizabeth.”
 

1:08 ... 1:07 ... 1:06 ...
 

“Seven seconds.”
 

“Please,” Moore sobbed, “
please!
”
 

No, she wanted to say, no it’s not fair, none of it’s fair, but then she heard Cain’s voice once again in her ear—“Five seconds”—and she turned her back on Reginald Moore and fled for the stairs.

CHAPTER 9

S
HE
REACHED
THE
top of the stairs, slammed through the door, and ran only four paces before the collar exploded.
 

The house shook, a mini-earthquake, enough to knock her to the floor. She hit her chin against the carpet, bit her tongue, instantly tasted blood. She scrambled to her feet, her stomach churning even more, that bile in the back of her throat fighting to make an exit.
 

Down the hallway, through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and then out the back door and she jumped over the two steps, went sprawling into the backyard just as the bile forced its way out. At first the stream of vomit was healthy but then it dissipated and all Elizabeth could do was dry-heave.
 

How long she lay there in the grass and fallen leaves, tears in her eyes, vomit ringed around her mouth, she didn’t know. Ever since she had been young, the sight—even the thought—of blood had nauseated her. Her mother had worked as a dental assistant, and sometimes she would come home and there would be spots of blood on her uniform and little Elizabeth would become lightheaded. A few times she had even fainted. Once when she was twelve she had scraped her knees badly on the playground and had gotten blood on her hands and had screamed and screamed until she passed out.
 

She hadn’t seen any blood, but she could imagine it. Even now, lying here in the grass, she could still see Reginald Moore twisting and turning and bucking to get out of the chair, the bright red digits on the alarm clock counting down, nothing either he or she could do to stop them.
 

It’s not fair, she had thought there in the last few seconds of Reginald Moore’s life, and it was true. According to the clock, he should have been given another minute before the C-4 detonated. But no, Cain had decided to prove just how powerful he was, accelerating the man’s death even if it was just by sixty seconds.
 

Still, she wondered what might have happened in those sixty seconds. Would Reginald Moore have come to some kind of understanding for the life he’d led? Would he have made his peace with God if he hadn’t already?
 

She didn’t realize she was still holding her cell phone until it started vibrating again.
 

Elizabeth picked her head up off the grass, squinting at the phone in her hand. She hated the thing. She’d gotten it because it made no sense paying for a landline and now here it was, a device linking her to this madman.
 

Climbing to her feet, she answered the phone, listening for Cain’s voice but hearing a distortion instead.
 

“What?” she asked.
 

Then it hit her. The explosion—it had been loud enough to cause her ears to ring, only she hadn’t realized it at the time, not with the taste of blood in her mouth and the bile rising and her need to get outside.
 

She put her finger to her ear, pressed down on it, then tried the phone again.
 

Cain was saying, “... don’t you think?”
 

“I couldn’t hear you. My ears were ringing. What did you say?”
 

“I said that must have made quite an impression on the neighborhood.”
 

At once she became conscious of the fact that she was still in a neighborhood, a quiet place where the only normal noises were the birds singing in the trees and the occasional car driving down the street. Anyone within one hundred yards or more could have heard the explosion and probably did, and she wondered how many of them were right now calling 911. Maybe someone across the street, or right next door, a concerned neighbor who despite the fact the house belonged to a child molester was still worried that something awful had just happened.
 

And something awful had just happened indeed. A man had died brutally. It didn’t matter that he was a child molester. Nobody deserved to die like that. Except, she thought, maybe Cain.
 

“Why did you do that?” she asked.
 

“I told you. To give you an example of what’s to come.”
 

“Where’s my son?”
 

“Home, Elizabeth. He’s waiting for you.”
 

She was running before she knew it, back down the driveway, under the shade of elms, toward the side of the street where she’d parked her car. She was inside and had the engine started a moment later, the tires squealing as she sped away.
 

It hit her much too late that she should have taken her time, that her squealing tires would draw attention to her, but then she figured what did it matter—at the moment she had no control over the events at hand, was merely a game piece being moved around at will, and the only thing that mattered right now was her son.
 

Her foot never once touched the brake, the needle of the speedometer rising steadily with every second. She had no choice but to stop at the intersection on the main drag.
 

The light turned green and she made the left, punching the gas. Here it became two lanes and she whipped past the other cars. Their apartment was less than ten minutes away; she thought she might be able to make it in seven minutes. Not that it made much difference in the larger scheme of things, but after just witnessing a man having been denied his extra minute of life, sixty seconds had become a tangible concept.
 

The speed limit here was forty-five miles per hour, strip malls and car washes and chain restaurants on both sides, and the speedometer’s needle was at fifty-five, working its way toward sixty, when she saw the cop car.
 

Parked in the same spot as it always was when running speed trap, just waiting for that careless driver who was in a hurry for no good reason, it didn’t move for a couple of seconds—Elizabeth’s gaze transfixed on the rearview mirror—but then, predictably, its roof-lights started flashing as it rolled out into the street.
 

Her fingers tightened against the wheel, her foot lifting off the gas. The phone was silent and still, Elizabeth for the first time wishing Cain would call because he would know what to do. Or would he? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that a cop was coming up behind her, the car growing larger and larger in her rearview mirror, and one of the things Cain had told her was she couldn’t talk to the police.
 

For an instant the idea to try to outrun the cop popped into her head, but she immediately dismissed it. That would only make things worse, at least as worse as things could get, and besides, the cop was right on her tail now so there was no thinking he was after anyone else. She had no choice, so she pulled the car over and waited.

CHAPTER 10

“L
ICENSE
AND
REGISTRATION
.”
 

She already had it ready for him and handed it out through the driver’s-side window as calmly as she could.
 

The officer took them and glanced at both, then glanced back at her. She could see her face reflected in his sunglasses and tried guessing whether or not she looked guilty.
 

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
 

Always deny, the man who’d once been her husband had told her, because if you admitted fault then you were automatically guilty. She didn’t know why she thought this now or why she went along with it, but she did.
 

“No.”
 

Studying her license as if it were a rare baseball card, he said, “I clocked you doing fifty-eight in a forty-five zone.”
 

“Really?” Her voice surprisingly steady. “I wasn’t aware I was going that fast.”
 

“We normally give about a five mile per hour cushion, but—”
 

“There was a bomb threat.”
 

“Excuse me?”
 

“At my son’s school. I just got a message about it and was on my way there. I, well, as you can imagine I’m sort of freaking out and didn’t realize how fast I was going. I mean, I know it’s no excuse, but ...”
 

She let it hang there, surprised that the lie came out so smoothly, wondering at what moment Cain would call and ask her just what the hell she thought she was doing. Except for what happened in the middle school parking lot, he always seemed to know where she was, what she was doing. Was he following her in a car? If so, where had he gone now that she had been pulled over?
 

“Yes, I heard about the threat.” The cop had been studying her license and registration again but now glanced up at her. “But the elementary school is in the opposite direction.”
 

She just stared back at him, at her reflection in his sunglasses that had suddenly begun to look more than guilty. She thought about Matthew, how according to Cain he was waiting for her at home, and she wanted to tell the officer this, tell him how her son had been abducted and how Reginald Moore had been blown to pieces and how she had thrown up in his backyard.
 

Remembering this last bit, she quickly reached up and touched her mouth, hoping that no vomit residue was there.